Referring Resources

Instructional Material: Robobucks

The Robobucks have been a lot of fun for my students.
It gives them an immediate reward for their efforts.
Here is how it works.

Dale Yocum over at Catlain Gable introduced this idea to us at the 2005 Superquest. I had so much fun with it that I have used it quite a bit in my own robotics classes. I also created my own Robobucks and you are free to use them any way you like.

On this page you will find my Robobucks, and below that a description of their uses.

These are JPEGs so you can just right click each one and save to a folder, or simply drag them into a document.

Robobucks are class management tools that can be used for a variety of incentives for my students. In general I use them for rewards for achieving specific tasks in the robotics challenges and to encourage team work.

Students are told that there will be an auction on the last day of the class. I bring in approximately 1.5 items to put on the auction block. I brought in as many unusual things as I could. There were many things from The Dollar Store, but I also got certificates for pizza at the cafeteria, a zillion freebies from vendors' booths at conferences, and even stuff from the hardware store (they like the string levels, and the giant nut & bolt was a hit).

Now and then I gave Robobucks out for especially clever, generous, and above-and-beyond actions by individuals. For example, the first student who came up to me and told me he had looked up the cryptic phrase in the buck got $5.

The auction was a lot of fun. It was an activity that ended all their efforts on a very positive note. I was also able to clean out that one drawer of my desk that had been filling up for some time!